Thorold Dickinson (1949)
I wanted to see The Queen of Spades for Edith Evans so of course I’m glad I did see it. This is an impressive film in many ways but, for me, an eventually unsatisfying one. Introducing it at a members only screening at BFI, Philip Horne from UCL spoke for much too long and in too much detail but one of the words he used to describe Thorold Dickinson’s film-making style has stayed in my mind – ‘rapidity’. The images in The Queen of Spades move with a nearly disorienting speed and fluency: most obviously in sequences where movement is the salient feature, such as couples dancing, but in less expected contexts too, as when Suvorin moves anxiously down a snowy street – under cover of darkness but unable to hide in the whiteness. Otto Heller’s camera, like the film’s protagonist, seems never at rest. Some of the gothic details of this psychological horror story – a ghostly presence is signalled by windows flung open, a curtain flapping, a gale blowing outside – are familiar but have unusual energy. The picture was made on a small budget and production began at a few days’ notice: it’s an incredible achievement. But the dramatisation of an obsession naturally depends heavily on the actor playing the character in the grip of that obsession. As Captain Suvorin, the embittered, penniless Russian officer who tries to earn his fortune playing cards, Anton Walbrook is accomplished and hard-working but he neither draws you into Suvorin’s desperate avarice nor makes you recoil from it. Because you’re not involved with or repelled by him, watching the captain get his comeuppance is an uncomfortably dispassionate experience: you know it has to happen and serves him right but it doesn’t feel like just desserts.
The Queen of Spades, adapted by Rodney Ackland and Arthur Boys from a short story by Pushkin (also the source of operas by Tchaikovsky, among others), is set in St Petersburg in the early nineteenth century, when faro was all the rage, and vast sums were wagered on it. (It takes its title from notoriously the unluckiest card in the pack.) At the start, Suvorin watches other officers gambling but he never himself plays faro. One night, he hears a story from one of his fellow officers about this man’s grandmother – an octogenarian countess who, as a young woman, lost a fortune then won it back, thanks to three cards. Suvorin determines to meet the old Countess Ranevskaya and to find out the secret winning formula. Anton Walbrook hasn’t the depth or the nimbleness of the film he’s in; what’s more, he’s best in the bits that inevitably matter less. When Suvorin is keeping his own counsel, you sense something in reserve; when he expresses his anguished feelings, Walbrook’s more is less. After getting into the Countess’s bedchamber and as he yells at her to tell him her secret, his acting is conventionally melodramatic. He’s good when Suvorin first finds out what the three cards are and bellows euphorically into his bedclothes. But even in the climactic scene, in which he plays what he knows will be a winning hand yet loses all, Walbrook isn’t particularly exciting (although Dickinson’s construction of the sequence is).
Edith Evans made her debut in talking pictures here (her previous film appearance was in East is East in 1916). Philip Horne told us that Evans – advised (by Alec Guinness) not to overdo things for the camera – underdid them to the extent that Dickinson struggled to get any sort of performance out of her at all. Horne seemed a bit sniffy about Evans but, watching her as the ancient countess, you soon know you’re in the presence of a great screen actress. Countess Ranevskaya walks with real difficulty – the awkwardness and slowness of her movement, the sense that it expresses the weight of her many years psychologically as well as physically, is brilliantly communicated. When Suvorin implores the old lady to reveal her secret, Evans’s mixture of fear and contempt is astonishing. Before the scene is out, the countess has suffered a fatal heart attack but the eye that we see is wide open and, through the magic of Edith Evans, is both dead and watching her uninvited guest. The Countess doesn’t seem quite to have stopped breathing either: at first I thought this was unintentional and real evidence of Evans’s inexperience on screen but of course it’s connected with that unclosing eye. It anticipates the startling moment when Suvorin goes to the Countess’s funeral service and is terrified by the signs of life he’s convinced he sees when he looks into her open coffin.
Yvonne Mitchell also made her screen debut here, as the Countess’s ward, who’s in love with Suvorin. Mitchell has an attractive vulnerability but also a distinctive (in this company) reality, that’s shared by Mary Jerrold as the Countess’s loyal servant, who looks almost as old as her mistress. Miles Malleson is, as usual, enjoyable, as a tipsy money-lender. The cast also includes Ronald Howard, Michael Medwin and Athene Seyler. Philip Horne quoted the composer Georges Auric as saying he didn’t realise until he composed the music for The Queen of Spades that he could write Russian music: Auric’s score sounded pretty Hollywood to me.
13 June 2011
